


Shower Curtain

by WeDidItKiddo



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Quarantine, Skype dates, Soulmates, blue vs brown eyes, social distancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:21:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23345374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeDidItKiddo/pseuds/WeDidItKiddo
Summary: Whatever idiot decided not to quarantine together during a global pandemic, Tessa would like to have a word with them.
Relationships: Morgan Rielly/Tessa Virtue
Comments: 12
Kudos: 103





	Shower Curtain

**Author's Note:**

> One thing I should mention: I’ve watched a grand total of two 45-second interviews with Morgan. Should I have done more research before writing this? Probably, but this was always going to be whatever my mind came up with, so we’re just going to roll with it.
> 
> That being said... I paid little to no attention to the Real Life timeline. I guess that means you could call this somewhat of an AU? No idea. I suck at putting things in boxes.
> 
> Let me know what you think?

Whatever idiot decided not to quarantine together during a global pandemic, she’d like to have a word with them.

Funnily enough, it wasn’t even a question when Canada went into a lockdown. He was in Vancouver, she was in London, and they both had their People. She had her mom and sister, who both agreed not to go beyond that little cluster of people. Her dad and Kevin and Casey had their own cluster. So did Morgan.

And it isn’t until she’s having a late dinner with the grainy, slightly delayed image of him on her laptop screen near the end of the first week that she realizes she’s been an idiot.

It’s her. She’s the idiot.

“I don’t want these Skype dates to become a thing, but I need them to become a thing if this is going to last longer than a month,” she groans around a spoonful of pasta sauce, leaning away from the stove to stare at her laptop as he moves around his kitchen to throw some really early dinner together.

Ever seen a Maple Leafs player move around his kitchen cooking dinner? She hadn’t either before the end of last year, but that’s something you never quite get used to. She knows she’s biased, but holy shit, he might just be the most attractive thing she’s ever seen move around a kitchen.

“I share the sentiment,” Morgan says, distracted by his penne taste testing. “Want to know how I’ve been spending my time?”

“Besides having conversations entirely through GIFs at three in the morning?”

He shoots her a knowing look over the steam billowing from the pot of freshly cooked pasta. “Watching people renovate their house. V, I’m telling you, it’s becoming a problem.”

“A problem as in... you’re inspired to start renovating your house now?”

“I dreamed about primers and caulking guns. It wasn’t pretty.”

Her mouth nearly starts salivating at the mental image of him wearing a tool belt and overalls, and she swiftly stuffs the wooden spatula back in her mouth before he can pick up on it.

_Damn, T. You’re in deep._

“If it makes you feel any better, Casey has been sending us updates of the treehouse he’s building in his backyard.” She moves from the stove to the kitchen island, settling in with the pot of pasta without bothering to transfer it to a plate.

Does anyone still eat from a plate these days?

“It’s been a week and he has gone through five different prototypes, all of which collapsed, so as long as you don’t act on your newfound passion for DIY, you should be good.”

“So you’re just going to assume I’m not amazing at DIY, eh?”

She pauses halfway through a bite, sucking air in through her nose. When she releases it, there’s a funny jumpy feeling in her chest that is immediately followed by the overwhelming urge to teleport herself to his house in Vancouver.

“I miss you,” she blurts, a spoonful of pasta dropping back into the pot.

“I miss you too,” he replies automatically, albeit with a slightly deepened crease in his forehead. “You alright there, Tess?”

“What? Of course I am.” She wipes her chin with a kitchen towel, casting her eyes over the kitchen island in search of a distraction.

It isn't often that she finds herself at a complete loss for words, but there’s no way she can explain to him what it’s like to sit down and have a conversation with her boyfriend after the most intense two decades of her life and realize that there are still so many things she doesn’t know about him.

Actually, there’s no one she can really explain this to. Except for the guy who was right there with her for the better part of those two decades.

She cuts her gaze back to the screen in front of her, where Morgan is slowly chewing on some pasta with a scarily intense look in his eyes.

“Are you trying to pick my brain?” she asks, flicking her fork at him and subsequently splattering the screen of her laptop with tomato sauce.

Morgan gives her a hint of a smile, speeding up his chewing again. “Nah. Just wondering.”

“Aha.” She bites her lip, hesitant, until something pushes her over the edge. “I like learning new things about you. I know that sounds cheesy as hell, but it’s true.”

“Fucking hell, V. Killing me with those pickup lines.”

She breaks into a smile; one, because his nickname for her tends to entice the swarm of butterflies in her belly and two, because the anticipation of the smile that's lighting up his face right now was exactly what prompted the courage to tell him this. 

“It’s not a pickup line, though.”

“It’s whatever. Are you going to eat those?”

He’s pointing at the pieces of garlic bread on the side of her plate, and she knowingly wiggles her eyebrows.

“You can have one, if you want. But you’ll have to come and get it.”

He clasps his hands together and raises them at the ceiling. “Oh, what I wouldn’t do for a piece of garlic bread right now.”

“Your fault, not mine.”

“Don’t I know it.”

She pushes the tip of her tongue between her teeth. Coordinating their dinners was largely coincidental, but she knew he’d be jealous of her garlic bread. That didn’t take more than one date to figure out.

Morgan’s phone buzzes next to his plate. She watches him peer over his screen and shovel a few quick bites in his mouth, and hers stops moving altogether.

“Aight, V, I gotta go. We’ll do this again later tonight, alright?”

“Sure thing,” she says, waving her fork again as if there's a white flag attached to it. “Talk to you in a bit.”

“See ya. Love you.”

"I love you too."

Morgan’s smile freezes on the screen before it disappears completely and leaves her staring at her reflection, fork still up in the air, imaginary white flag still waving.

It’s a sign of surrender. Surrender to the reality of quarantine, and that they both still have things going on, but also to the fact that this is going to be their new normal for now. 

And that’s just week one.

____________________________

Week two of quarantine presents itself with bottles of vodka in different living rooms on completely opposite sides of Canada, where its consumers are getting increasingly more cheeky and less concerned about the fact that they’re in a group Skype call with four other Leafs Players.

“I love you,” Morgan semi-sings (wildly out of tune) for the fourth time in quick succession, which is received with a chorus of groans from the other guys.

“Save it, Mo.”

“Yeah, Mo. Save it for the bedroom, she’ll like that.”

“Shut it, Matty.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask to be here. You talked me into it.”

“Yeah, because you were the one complaining you haven’t been getting enough of my attention lately.”

The other guys all start howling, finally causing Tessa to slap the pillow over her face she’s been hugging to her chest for most of the Skype call. 

Here’s the reality of the situation: she drowned out the part of her that would be bothered by this locker room talk twenty minutes ago, when they took their fifth shot. Now, she’s more amused than anything, though she could do with a little less attention, seeing as she’s the only girlfriend who joined the chat.

“Alright, I’m out, no need to be reminded of my eternal bachelorship. You good there, Tessa?”

Tessa pulls down the pillow just enough to lift a finger at Mitchell in farewell. “Perfect. Have a great night, Mitchy.” 

“You too.”

As she pulls the pillow back over her face and lies back on the carpet of her bedroom, more guys drop out of the chat, until she’s left with Morgan and Matty, who are annoyingly normal best friends that shit on each other with no filter. Until Mo, she’d forgotten what that felt like.

“Do you believe in soulmates, Tessa?” are the first words that penetrate the pillow after some more banter between the two guys, and it’s the tone of Matty’s voice that makes her hurl the pillow across the carpet.

“Does it take you six shots to get deep, Matty? I was betting on seven or eight at least, but maybe I overestimated you.”

Morgan barks out a howling laugh. Matty’s face stays stoically sincere, to the point where she feels obliged to answer.

“I can’t believe you want to talk about soulmates over Skype, Matty.”

“The vodka was your idea,” Morgan points out, still a grin in his voice.

It was. In a moment of weakness caused by the virtual presence of five Leafs players, she decided the only way she could lose the girlfriend label was to suggest doing shots. Not her shiniest moment.

“How exactly does vodka correlate with soulmates and questions about life?”

“You’re avoiding my question,” Matty says. 

“Alright, fine. I do believe in soulmates.”

“Do you believe in more than one soulmate?” Morgan chirps in, his stupefaction at her answer winning over the hilarity from earlier.

“Yes, I do. Do you really think there’s only one person on this entire planet who gets you like no one else does? I’d like to believe there’s more than one person for everyone, given that there’s seven billion people on this planet.”

“So you think everyone has more than one?”

She stares at Matty’s little figure and is momentarily dumbstruck by the fact that she’s suddenly launched into a discussion about soulmates with two Maple Leafs players. “Uh – I didn’t say we all get to meet ours. But yes, sure.”

Matty purses his lips and tilts his head from side to side, considering the likelihood of her theory. Morgan, meanwhile, is humming a tune somewhere out of frame, presumably to grab another drink.

She doesn’t miss how he keeps up the same tune even when he pops back into frame, a nonchalance in his movements that is a little too unnatural.

“So, on that note, I’m going to leave you two lovebirds,” Matty then announces out of the blue. It's not hard to guess the reason behind the sudden satisfaction on his face, given the fact that Morgan’s nonchalant exterior breaks and he drops his jaw.

“You little f—”

“Language, Mo,” Matty says, and his ghostly smile freezes on their screens for a second before it disappears without even as much as a goodbye.

“He’s an asshole,” Morgan says when only the two of them are left.

“Interesting topic though.”

One brow shoots up his forehead and he grunts. “I can see your question coming from two thousand six hundred miles away and I’m warning you now that I’m not answering it. At least not until I’m completely sober.”

“Fair enough.”

“But.”

“But what?”

“But I can ask you a question, can’t I?” He puts down one of the records he was pretending to be studying, zeroing his attention in on her.

“And how is that fair? I’ve had just as much vodka as you.”

“You can choose not to answer.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“ _Okay_ , ask me your damn question already.”

“Fine. Jeesh.” He playfully rolls his eyes, but the earnestness doesn’t leave his gaze. “Do you think it’s too early to know if we are?”

She knows right then and there that he wouldn’t have asked that question if he’d been sober. One reason being the fact that she still hasn’t agreed to move in with him, despite his persistent hints that he’s dying to get a place together.

It’s the only gap in their relationship, and the soulmates question just bridged it entirely. She’s just not sure how much of that bridge will still hold up tomorrow.

“We’ll discuss that another time, yeah?” she says. The timing is just not right, and she can feel it. Even after six shots.

Her heart feels heavy at the sight of his mellow smile when he agrees. The physical distance between them has never felt more palpable, and it’s making her feel homesick right in the middle of her own bedroom floor.

“I’m going to bed, Rielly. We don’t all live on Pacific Time.”

“Oh, right. Forgot about that.”

She knows for a fact that he didn’t. Even after six shots.

They say goodbye shortly afterward, his question about soulmates still buzzing in her brain when she pulls the covers over her face to block out any speck of light. Her eyes are wide open regardless, her mind going a million miles an hour as she tries to come up with an answer.

She knows she doesn’t owe him one. But she owes it to herself.

That’s week two.

____________________________

Week three of quarantine is when he hypothetical shit that is Tessa Virtue’s patience hits the fan.

If leaving her place for a walk around the block seems illegal nowadays, arriving at the airport for one of the few remaining flights to the other side of the country feels a little like she's heading to trial for a bank robbery. She’s decked out in a mask and gloves when she walks to baggage claim in Vancouver, catching an Uber and thanking her driver multiple times for his service.

Finally, she walks up the steps to his front door, but instead of ringing the doorbell, the front door swings open right in front of her.

“You little shit” is the first thing out of Morgan’s mouth, the expression on his face stuck somewhere between surprise, caution and a suppressed desire to kiss the life out of her.

It’s the latter that makes Tessa hesitate as she slides her fingers back and forth over the handle of her suitcase. Suppressing means he’s keeping himself from breaking the six-feet distance between them, and while she’s been nervous about his reaction to seeing her ever since she booked the tickets, she didn’t expect _this_.

“We can sit six feet apart from each other. I’ll quarantine in the guest bedroom for two weeks, I really don’t care,” she says. “But I’m not letting Skype dinner dates become a thing.”

The desire in his eyes explodes and he presses his lips together, stepping back to let her in.

It’s when she hoists her suitcase over the threshold that she realizes she was wrong: the bridge they constructed a week ago is still there, strong as ever, and she quite literally just walked right across it.

“Tess. You don’t need to stay in the guest bedroom,” he says when she marches through the hallway that’s right across from the master bedroom.

“I just want to be sure. I don’t want anything to happen to your family.”

“And I don’t want anything to happen to them either. We’ll just stay in for two weeks.”

“You mean both of us?”

“Tess.”

She halts in front of the guest bedroom, reluctantly chewing on her lip. Then her gaze moves from his sweatpants to his dark blue hoodie, both of which should not be flying off his body in her imagination but 100% are. “Do you have enough groceries for two weeks?”

One corner of his mouth shoots up, a light switching on in his eyes. “We could do with some fresh produce. You get settled, I'll be back in twenty.”

Her smile nearly splits her face in two. “Will do. I probably need a shower anyway.”

“Oh, and T?”

“Yeah?”

He wrinkles his forehead, the rest of his body already pointing the other way. Then he seems to reconsider. “Never mind. Twenty minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”

He disappears down the hallway, and Tessa rolls her suitcase back and forth over the hardwood floor undecidedly. Gazing in the direction he disappeared, she slowly turns her suitcase and heads for his bedroom.

She doesn’t hear his car returning thirty minutes later, nor does she sense when the garage door is set into motion. It’s when the door in the hallway slams shut that she steps out from underneath the water stream, rubbing her eyes and straining her ears to catch his footsteps right outside the bathroom.

The handle of the bathroom goes down. She turns off the shower tap completely.

His breathing goes shallow when he halts right behind her on the other side of the solid white shower curtain, his chin a mere inch from her left shoulder.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks, sending a shiver down Tessa’s spine.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“We might be stuck together for more than just a month. Just making sure you’re aware of that.”

The only thing she’s aware of right now is his mouth pressing a kiss in her neck through the shower curtain, but she nods regardless.

His arms circle around her waist, wrapping the shower curtain around her, and she lets her breath escape. Searching, she turns her head, pressing her lips to his through the damp fabric.

His body reacts the way it would if they weren’t separated by the shower curtain. He reaches for more of her, grabbing her fingers at the very edge of the curtain.

“You can still reconsider,” he mutters, pressing a kiss to the fabric wrapped around the tops of her fingers. He lifts his head and his gaze finally finds hers, blue boring into green.

For a moment, she’s taken aback by it. For the right and the wrong reasons. She’s the most vulnerable version of herself when she’s with him, a version she’s only ever shown to a handful of people, and it has taken her a long time to let someone in like that again.

And she decides to tell him the truth, something she didn’t do nearly enough when those blue eyes were still brown.

“I don’t know if we are soulmates,” she says, pulling back the curtain entirely and bringing his hand up to her lips. “But I honest to God can’t wait to find out.”

He breathes out when two thousand six hundred miles become none, and then he steps right into the shower with her. 

And that’s week three.

**Author's Note:**

> I should note that the shower scene was fully inspired by one of my favorite Belgian TV shows. I loved what the curtain symbolized for the two characters in that show, and I love that fanfic gives me the opportunity to put my own twist on it.
> 
> Anyway. First TMo fic in the books for me. And I gotta tell ya... I'm not mad about it.


End file.
